23rd Birthday Part 2

•December 8, 2009 • Leave a Comment

I know I shouldn’t be making excuses, but i swear this post has taken me forever to do because I’m -still- in a cast.  At least this one is fiberglass and a bit lighter… but damn. It feels like a giant mitten that I just can’t take off. Also sometimes when I become fully aware that I can’t take it off I get really claustraphobic of my own arm. Is that weird? Probably.

So what happened? That is the ultimate question, isn’t it.  People are always asking me what happened and I have a variety of answers that I give. Sometimes I say I fell skateboarding, sometimes I say I slipped down my front steps, and most of the time I say that I ran into a door that I thought was open.  But which one is the truth? None of them.  The truth is is that NO ONE remembers what the fuck happened, including myself.

The Thursday night before my birthday one of my friends came up from home, so of course we had to do something special.  We went to a hockey game, Sens vs. Tampa Bay.  I think the game went well, but by the time I got there I couldn’t see straight. I do vaguely recall trying to hug the Sens mascot then having him make fun of me for being drunk.  Mildly embarrassing.  It also started snowing that night and after the game my friend tried to throw snowballs at me so I was running away at full speed.  As I was running, I didn’t see the largest rock of life (two feet wide and 3 feet long) and I ran right into it.  I launched cartoon style into the parking lot and definitely perma-bruised my hip.  So there I was, outside the stadium, on the ground in the snow, laughing and crying, and some Canadian soldier comes over and helps me up.  He asked why I was such a disaster and I replied because it is my 23rd birthday.  Then you know what the fucker did? He looks and me goes “Wow. You’re old.” Then walks off without saying anything else.

I’m normally not a fragile person, but I started to cry because I was wasted and I realized I was getting old. I think that’s more embarrassing than being made fun of by the mascot. So I get on the bus crying and get back to Carleton, still crying, and my friends decide that I need to drink more. Next thing I recall is passing out on my bed horizontal so that I could hold my phone, which was charging, so I could hear when my friend got back (I lost him somewhere along the way too). I wake up to being spread across the whole bed, dead to the world, and my poor friend sleeping on the floor.

What a way to start my first day as 23.

So when did I break my hand during that point? I didn’t. That night was just the pre-party to my actual birthday party that was happening that evening… of which that story will be coming soon!

Cuidate.

23rd Birthday Part 1

•November 16, 2009 • Leave a Comment

So my dad sent me a birthday card with a Mary Anne Radmacher quote. I read it and thought… I know this is supposed to be inspirational in a constructive and good way, but really, it just makes me want to go out and get epically destroyed to celebrate my life. So, really, the following quote is essentially the one that convinced me to go out and give it my all to celebrate the life I never thought I would be living.

Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Continue to learn.
Appreciate your friends.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.

Basically sums me up in a nice little package. Especially ‘play with abandon’. ‘choose with no regret’, and
‘live as if this is all there is.’

To be continued…

23rd Birthday

•November 9, 2009 • Leave a Comment

So, it was my 23rd birthday on November 6th and the ultimate question is: Was it amazing?

I think a picture speaks 1000 words.

Details of  how I acquired the most massive cast of life will be divulged when I’m not so ripped on Codeine. Wonderful, wonderful codeine.

Two Thumbs Up

I give my birthday night two thumbs up!

Studying Finance

•October 30, 2009 • Leave a Comment

So I have a brutal exam tomorrow, in the meantime, i find this song rather soothing…. who knows. Maybe I have this deep desire to set the world on fire, but I just love you too much.

Beer Pressure

•October 28, 2009 • 2 Comments

So I know it’s been a while. Well, more than a while actually. Way too long is more like it.

I sorta went through this thing…that led to another thing, which led to me having no desire to write anything at all. But now I feel that I am back into my normal skin and a different state of mind. On that note, I thank Julian for beer pressuring me tonight into writing this post.

I guess I had thought that Canada was so boring and not worth writing about. However, with the friends that I have and the situations that I always seem to end up in, there are things worth telling to others. It might not be about an exotic location or a an amazing type of food or about the differences of culture, but there are stories about my life, my friends, the random evenings, and the really strange things that always seem to happen to just me.

For example? Last night after I finished writing my first midterm I went to the student bar (as per usual). There, I met this guy who I now wish I never met. Obnoxious, self-centered, and completely ignorant are the three best ways I could describe him. Regardless of his personal nature, I will never forget him singing some east-coast Canadian song about a lass, out loud, in the middle of the bar, with everyone being like ‘what the fuck who is this douchebag.’ I hope I never see him again in my life despite being serenaded to.

I guess I’m just one of those people that odd and unusual and exciting things will happen to.  And regardless of where I am in the world, they are worth writing about. So stay tuned, it’s about to get messy.

Thanks Julian, and Happy Birthday.

I Have Moved On… Geographically

•May 5, 2009 • 1 Comment

About two and a half months have gone by since my last post. What happened? Where did I go? Anything new to tell? Wish I could give you answers to all of your potential questions, but honestly… I still can’t.

Over the past months, I have written version after version in attempts to explain what has happened to me since the day I stopped writing. All of my attempts just didn’t cut it. I didn’t want to post something that fucking sucked, obviously, being less than par was never what I aimed for… So, I simply didn’t write. Even writing this now is painful…hopefully less painful for you to read than for me to write.

Anyways, I still can’t tell you properly what went down, when does one really understand their own brain and its actions? Although, I can tell you that, initially, something tweaked and I lost it for about 5 days. I had quite honestly given up, left reality, got lost in my own head, straight became left, left became backwards, backwards was my vision, and have very little recollection of what I did for 5 days. I wandered dead as a zombie before making the decision to take back over my brain.

Sort of back in control of myself, I did what any respectable traveler would do: I peaced the fuck out. I took myself out of the situation and left for Bolivia (which is a whole other story). In a way, it was the best possible decision I could have made. In other ways, it made life more difficult. After running away was all said and done I had just ended up back where I started.

The last post I made on Feb 25th I said ” Life and death, take and give, or grow and wilt, we all move on.” Rather optimistic, eh? Well, I have moved on… at least geographically.  One thing after another led to me flying home to Canada on April 7th.  The adventures and misadventures in South America abruptly ended and I felt as if I hit a stop sign going 120km/hr. I didn’t see it coming, but it was the right choice, and I don’t regret it.  Other than geographically, I have not moved on…and that’s about as about as far as I’m going with that one right now.

So..there’s the update ladies and gents. Yeah, I feel like shit and, Yeah, life’s a bitch.

But you know what? I’m a bitch too, and I’m back.

I’m So Sorry

•February 25, 2009 • Leave a Comment

However you look at it, sunday night or the wee hours of the monday morning, the same heart breaking thing happened. I lost my best friend, my cat Capone, to two dogs who live next door.  They got him off my roof and killed the most amazing cat ever.  I know for some of you it may seem silly to be so upset over a pet, but he was truly the only consistent, reliable, and loving creature in my life. No matter what happened or where I was in my own head, he made me feel so much better, so much less alone, and always brought out a smile. I agonizingly miss him and I don’t want to believe he’s gone.  Alas, death is a part of life that we can’t avoid, no matter how awful it might be. Life and death, take and give, or grow and wilt, we all move on.

Posting other stories just isn’t going to happen for a while.  Capone… everyone who reads this frequently….

I’m so sorry.

Capone

Irk

•February 6, 2009 • 1 Comment

“Irk” – a feeling given by a situation that gives you a twitch or slightly aggravates or frustrates you.  Generally is the feeling accompanied with a clenched jaw, pursed lips, or a low growl of frustration.

This story takes place over a two day time period and happened a few days ago. I was told I needed a document called CUIL (it’s like a social insurance number so the government can take income tax) in order to legally work in Argentina. The process to get this document included having: a passport/form of identification, proof I was living here (visa etc), and a document proving where I lived. I had the first two, my passport and my student visa, but then I went on a hunt to get the last one which is a document of domicilio. So, I had to go to the cop shop of my neighbourhood, talk to the police, pay them 10 pesos, and then they said they’d come to my house the next day. If it wasn’t for the extremely hot police officer who could turn me into a criminal just so I could see him again, this entire hunt was really a time wasting process. So, the following day they said they’d arrive between 9 and 2. Typically Argentine, they arrive at 2:30, ask me my name and my passport number, and give me a piece of paper. Boom. Done. Easy as pie and extremely sad that they had to waste two police officers time in order to do this.

The next day I’m off to the government office to go to get my CUIL number. It is summer here and everyone is roasting on the beaches, so they have shortened hours of 9-2, but I didn’t think it would be that bad. I had heard before that this is a 5 minute process and not that complicated. Well, apparently, 5 minutes means 3 hours. I show up at the place at 10am and the line up is 2 city blocks long. City blocks here aren’t a standard measure and they tend to vary greatly. These just happened to be two massive city blocks of which I had to wait in 35 degree weather, 75% humidity, and the scorching sun without a cloud in the sky. At least it was air conditioned inside for a better part of the wait.

I finally arrive at a desk where a guy asks for two photocopies of my documents when earlier they had told me just one photocopy. Cursing to myself, I head to the photocopier location in this building, which is definitely owned by that guys’ family and probably makes a killing everyday. All said and done, all documents handed in, 3 hours shot down the shit hole, they hand me a piece of paper with about 5 lines of Arial style text straight off of notepad. It could be so easily forged it’s unbelievable. Seriously, I could make all my friends one no problem. Anyways, I’m standing there with this piece of paper going… what the fuck, is there another part to this process? So I ask the guy and he’s like “no, see at the bottom? That’s your number. You have to go get this cut, folded, and laminated at the photocopy center at the front of the building.” He just stared dumbly at me when I adopted the facial expression lovingly known as ‘stunned’. I was stunned. I didn’t realize I would have to cut, fold, and laminate the piece of paper in order to make my own social security card. I was waiting for them to add onto the end that I’d have to pay extra for a hologram on it or something. Just to spice it up a bit I should have rainbow coloured it with markers before laminating it. Well, despite my newfound lack of respect for official documents here, I am at least now legally allowed to work here in the country.

Jumping back in time before the government office, that morning I got woken up at 8:20 and I’m never happy when I get woken up that early. The guy, ripped on cocaine or red bull (he moved at a speed unknown to humans at 8:20am), came to install my internet came 3 hours early, that’s cool. One hole in the side of my house later, I have cable internet! Well… I had cable internet. Typical of electronics in this continent, It worked for one day and then stopped working. So this morning I called the company and explained what was up and they tried to reset it from their end which didn’t work. The guy was like “okay well, we will have to send a technician to fix it, okay? How does the 20th of February sound?” Two. Bloody. Weeks. I shit a brick. I asked to speak to his supervisor about the shitty service (I really did say shitty) and to get an earlier date. He told me that his supervisor would say the same thing and that it was summer so no one was working and to just deal with it. TISA’d, man, completely TISA’d (This Is South America). Such a piss off. Then I told him to cancel my service so I wouldn’t have to pay for internet I didn’t have for the next two weeks and he was like “cancel your service? Really? But then you will have to resign all the contracts when they technician arrived.” Hmm, let me think here. Resign contracts or pay money for fucking nothing. That’s a tough one.

As a recap before I continue, the timeline has gone like this: police and house document, then the following break of dawn was the internet guy waking me up, and the morning/afternoon was waiting for my CUIL number. Since I didn’t get enough frustration out of that, I headed to the UPS warehouse to pick up a package my lazy ass ex-housemates wouldn’t answer the door for. I really should’ve just left it for another day, but as you know, I can be really stupid.

So off I went to my old apartment to pick up the delivery slips from UPS and then to their warehouse in the city. Go figure the warehouse is in the sketchiest area ever and I have to take a cab part of the way.  So I get inside and hand them the slip and they come back with a peice of paper that has a tracking number on it. “Well, the package actually never arrived here, it got stuck at customs. So you have to go to the International Cargo Terminal and pick it up with this number. They will charge you a holding fee there. Oh, that will be $85.50.” Fuck right off, eh? What the hell is it with everything I try getting sent to me getting stuck at customs in the international cargo terminal which is a 2 hour trip outside the city.  I told the dude I wasn’t paying $85.50 for a tracking number when my aunt had already paid for the package to arrive and it didn’t.  Unbelievable.  I bet the guy at UPS has a buddy at customs and whenever anything expensive comes through they decide to nail foreigners for more money.  So I told him I wasn’t paying and I’d come back later if I was going to ever pick up the package. Which is probably never.

So, that is what I’ve been up to.  I’m basically broke and can’t afford food or next month’s rent. Although eating a banana with milk smoothie and 3 empanadas a day as my daily food intake is quite possibly the best diet ever, it probably doesn’t cut it. Things are looking up, though, with my work documents in order and all of that.  I just hope I don’t have to deal with the public or government systems in this country ever again.

Cuidate!

Moving Days

•January 30, 2009 • Leave a Comment

The past month has been a whirlwind. Up in the air, whirling around, feet not on the ground, and not entirely sure what’s going to happen next, basically sums it all up. It always comes down to several defining events, situations, or people that just make life extra mind-blowing. You would think that after all of this time in South America that I would be used to the feeling of the unexpected or being caught completely off guard. But, alas, some stuff still makes my jaw drop, my head shake in disbelief, or it leaves me saying “how did I get into this?”

At the beginning of January, I left my palace bachelor apartment for the ghetto. Not quite literally the ghetto, of course, but a really sketchy area of the city. You know it’s bad when even the locals are like “why the fuck would you ever want to live there?” In the area called Once, it’s very multi-cultural with the majority being either Peruvians or Orthodox Jewish. With textiles and cheap clothing being what the area is well known for, it is definitely an interesting combination to see bearded Jewish children walking amongst Peruvians carrying massive bolts of colourful fabric. Nothing is open on weekends or at night, so it’s the perfect breeding ground for little fuckers to walk around and cause trouble. There is even a main plaza, called Plaza Once, where I would never even dream of walking through it…. Never. Not any day or any time. I will walk close in order to get into the subway, but that’s about it.

A few blocks from where I lived in Once, I was with a friend, who is in a rather shady business himself, on the terrace of his house having some beers. He pointed over the edge and said “check out those three kids, they’re going to rob that car.” I thought… no way, it’s only 10:30pm, there are other cars, it’s parked under a light, and it definitely has an alarm. But, sure enough, with skilled precision and experience, those kids popped open the door, and stole everything from inside including the stereo system. This all happened in under a minute while the car alarm was going off. No one on the street or from their apartments did shit all, including myself. I just watched in awe as they worked like skilled professionals, stealing what they would otherwise never have. Within seconds, three motorcycles pulled up and picked up the kids getting away, then drove off without any issues.

That’s just talking about the neighbourhood, not even my apartment which ultimately ended up worse. I lived with two Argentine guys who are really cool and permanently stoned. I thought this would make life easy, but unfortunately, it just made my life really frustrating. I guess I’ll start a little venting session here, why not… but where to begin. Well, not even in my apartment, the elevator always smelled like one of three things: piss, cigarettes, or a mixture of both.

Okay, so the apartment itself was a decent size but way overpriced. Weekly cleaning services my ass, there was never one clean dish in the entire place AND they broke all of the glasses I brought from my other apartment. There was no front door handle, the laundry room was a disaster, the laundry machine electrocuted you unless you unplugged it before touching it, plastic lawn furniture, one old and falling-apart therapist couch, a caved in ceiling in the bathroom, and one mirror in the entire place. My room didn’t have any hangers or shelves, just holes in the wall, in which I stuck pens and pencils in order to hang things. The bathroom I had beside my room only had a functioning light half the day because it was timed for the pot plants growing in the ceiling and I had to flush the toilet by pulling a knob through a hole in the wall then dodging water squirting out from the pipes. The list goes on, endlessly, no lies.

Now, my roommates are next on the chopping block. Honestly really awesome guys, but just so useless. With their spirits permanently stuck with Bob Marley, they constantly ate my food and didn’t tell me about it or admit to eating my food. This includes leftover pizza in the fridge, which I bought, and then they ate an entire half of the pizza and when I confronted them about it they said “oh… I couldn’t remember if we bought that or not.” What the fuck. Then they were constantly cooking at ridiculous hours, whether it was 3am or noon. My room was right beside the kitchen and because of their obsession with fruit smoothies, they would use my blender and it would wake me up. Finally, one of the guys is a musician with no job and, ironically enough, is a huge slut. Impressively slutty, actually. He normally had a different girl every week, but then he went on a sort-of bender and the count was 9 girls in 6 days, which is enough for me to not bother introducing myself when I see them around the house. It wasn’t until the 9th random girl (out of 6 days) took a shower at 7:30am, ran around the house drunk, naked, and screaming some song lyrics, did I decide that I had enough. The entire house just eventually ended up smelling like a blend of mould, sweat, marijuana, and used whore. As I laid there in bed listening to her worthless existence, I put my foot down and decided that it is not fucking worth it. Even though I still had a paid week left in the month, within two days I lucked upon finding another place and moved out on the third day.

Did I ever luck out with the new place. It is a little far out, about 45min to get to downtown on public transpo, but damn is it ever worth it. It’s a house that has been newly renovated and the family is still in Italy, so their buddy is just renting it out for cheaper cheap in order to pay for utilities. It’s two floors with a rooftop terrace/grill, a garage, downstairs patio, and one other girl living with me. So far she’s really cool shit and there have been no problems at all, although, we will see! So I have my own room with a huge double closet, two single mattresses pushed together on the floor to make a double, en suite bathroom, and Capone of course. He’s gotten himself stuck twice in the trees that are in the downstairs patio… so much for cats being able to climb trees. I have never slept so well and it’s definitely a vast improvement over the previous apartment. I don’t have internet yet, but that’s also partially due to me being lazy and not calling the company to come in and install it. Ah well, it’s a good excuse to haul my ass into the city to get free wifi.

That’s been just my whirlwind apartment situation, I haven’t even touched on the whole employment aspect of my life. I think I’ll save that until next time, I’m all vented out right now.

Cuidate!

Putzin’ Along

•January 14, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Life has been rather uneventful lately, to be perfectly honest. Or, it’s possible that I’m just becoming accustomed to weird things happening all the time. I’ve just been putzing along at the usual pace, doing some stuff, and simply finding myself rather unmotivated to tell anyone about it. I don’t want to leave you guys with nothing, so here are a few things that I’ve randomly jotted down.

1. January 10th was my one year anniversary of friendship with Agustina. That is a pretty big deal. Predictably, we celebrated this beautiful union by partying hard, which we both seem to have a talent for.

2. If a girl tells you that the girl she is dancing with is her girlfriend, and that is sole the reason she is turning you down, there is a good chance that it’s a lie. She just doesn’t want to dance with you and has a wide variety of reasons that would, most likely, hurt your ego. Deal with it.

3. Ive been trying to write a ‘letter of intent’ for a scholarship I’m applying for and, frustratingly, it is proving very difficult to write. I don’t exactly know why, I guess I just don’t like having to put into words why I’m so awesome. I appreciate the 500 word limit on the explanation of my existence and its purpose. Although…maybe if my English vocabulary wasn’t going down the shit hole I would be able to accomplish this task a bit better. I don’t suppose saying “Clearly, I am amazing and I deserve this scholarship based solely on my travels, previous employment stated in my resume, and the fact I am even bothering to apply.” No… that wouldn’t be a good idea.

4. I could be hallucinating, but I’m pretty sure the cement buildings in this city are emitting heat waves. The heat radiating off this concrete jungle contributes to air that feels more like a wet blanket than something you should breathe. The summer is now in full force and I am mentally bashing myself for not moving into an apartment with air conditioning. I suppose I will give myself a pat on the back for not contributing to city wide blackout problem.

5. I’m unemployed. Again. Back to plain rice it is!

That pretty much covers it. Hopefully next time I’ll actually have something worthwhile to say.
Cuidate.